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An impressive and disturbing book, very complex either in structure and composition, covering almost all the meanings of ludic with equal attention, be it in nature, in human behaviour or artificial intelligence. Here is the ocean and the earth playgrounds, silently suffocating in plastic and other garbage, here is friendship and other noble relationships playgrounds, also dying, whereas a virtual playground gradually occupies the vacated spaces, drawing its power from the extinction. Even the two narrative voices graphically distinct by the italics seem in the end be only one, cleverly simulating the other before the eyes of the reader. And you wonder: is Rafi the Ocean (aka Life) and Todd the computer (aka AI) and is their friendship doomed precisely because they symbolize two opposing forces that cannot understand each other? Maybe the answer is a little more complex than this, but one thing is for sure: the difference between life and virtual life becomes less and less clear for many humans and this is the scariest thing of all.

How much has it warmed the oceans, to give you birth? How many species have died so that you can live? What will it mean, to have in our midst a thing that will give us whatever we ask for? I’ll be gone before we answer that. I won’t live to see the blow you’ll inflict on human thought, the damage you’ll do to our self-image, the mayhem you and your offspring will wage on human culture, the power you’ll scatter. I can’t begin to imagine what further creatures you’ll give birth to. Already I’m ruined by the ones you’ve made for me.

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